MANAGEMENT OF DIGITISATION PROJECTS IN NIGERIAN UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES

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Author

Presented To

Department of Education

ABSTRACT
The study Management of Digitisation Projects in Nigerian University Libraries was conducted to assess how digitisation projects are being managed in Nigerian University Libraries. This is because efforts are being put forward to improve on the information resource handling and management from being manually driven to electronic driven especially in Libraries and Information centers where information bearing mediums were originally in printed formats. And as such a particular library could not participate effectively in the information sharing methods that can be facilitated by digitisation. Four objectives were achieved by formulating and answering four research questions for the study. The objectives were to find out the skill sets available for managing digitisation projects in Nigerian university libraries, identify the types of information resources that are being digitized, find out the criteria that are being used for the selection digital asset management software and to assess digital preservation policy and strategies that are employed in the management of digitisation projects in Nigerian university libraries, Survey method was adopted for the study. The research instruments used to collect data for the study were questionnaire and interview. Since the whole population for the study is 40, all of them were used. That is 8 subjects from Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, 8 from University of Jos, 6 from Covenant University, Ota, 11 fron University of Nigeria, Nsukka and 7 from Federal University of Technology, Akure. Data were presented in frequency tables and percentages. Analysis and discussions were made to each table. Findings of the study revealed that majority of staff that engaged in digitisation project management are librarians who possess the ability to use software packages like Abbyfine reader, Omnipage and PDF respectively. Again the finding revealed that all universities where digitisation project is going on emphasize mostly on PhD dissertations, Masters theses and university Journal articles whose copyright have been obtained. That many universities consider open source criteria, functionality, interoperability, scalability and extensibility as criteria for selecting digital asset management software, principle statement, contextual link, preservation objectives and identification content were the major policy elements The study concluded that inadequate staff skill sets possessed by the digitisation staff and the digitisation management stakeholders impedes digitisation project management best practices in Nigerian university libraries. Based on these findings several recommendations were made such as librarians, system analysts and archivists should be awarded short and long-time training or courses to acquire more skills, University libraries in Nigeria should focus their digitisation project on local contents such as dissertations, theses, journal articles and university journals. They should be committed to a substantial investment in keeping pace with open source digital asset management software for managing digitisation projects and there is need for a written policy document that will help to focus the digitisation project management.